Your Kindle 99p bargains for May, as ever a little late. A great line-up of SF and some good thrillers, less strong in the other genres I follow but solid. As ever, grab them before the end of the month.
CLASSICS
Olivia Manning – the Levant Trilogy. The successor to the Balkan trilogy, I’ve never quite gelled with her but 3 novels for 99p is good value.
NOVELS
Michael Punke – The Revenant. Source for the film.
Tim Winton – The Shepherd’s Hut. Cloud Street is the Great Australian Novel – another by Winton.
SF
Iain Reid – Foe Very well reviewed, not read yet.
Chris Beckett – Mother of Eden. Not read it either, another well-respected British writer, but this is the middle of a trilogy.
Neal Stephenson – Anathem. If you are a later period Stephenson fan, this is another 900 page blockbuster. If not then I guess these doorsteps are never going to change your mind.
Ted Chaing – Stories of Your Life. Quite superb, Chaing may be the Mozart of the modern sci-fi short story. Includes the novella that became the film Arrival.
Two absolute classics to finish….
Christopher Priest – Inverted World
Philip K Dick – A Scanner Darkly
THRILLERS
Philip Kerr – Field Grey. Another dependable entry in the Kerr canon.
Andrea Camilleri – Games of Mirrors. Inspector Montelbano.
Patricia Highsmith – Strangers on a Train. No comments needed surely. Horrified to hear there is a film remake in the works – even if it is Fincher-helmed, allegedly.
NON-FICTION
John Cooper Clarke – I Wanna Be Yours. Well regarded round here, auto biography of the Mancunian stick insect and poet.
I would spend £5 on Chaing, Highsmith, Winton, Clarke and Dick personally.
I cannot recommend ‘Anathem’ by Neil Stephenson highly enough.
The Baroque Trilogy and Cryptonomicon are widely celebrated but there’s a sizeable chunk of his readership that think ‘Anathem’ may be his masterpiece. It’s a thoughtful, philosophical book that still manages to be a page turner. For 99p it is an astounding bargain.
For fans of meaty doorstops only, obvs.
Just discovered the price is actually £1.29, so scratch everything I said above.
What a burn!
Two more from the SFF selection, both from the fantasy end of things:
Clive Barker’s Weaveworld – probably his best novel, a superbly imaginative doorstop about a literal magic carpet
Katherine Addison – The Goblin Emperor. Not admittedly the most attractive title, but I loved this one. The blurb gives you the setup:
The sense of haplessly navigating something vast, ancient and complex put me in mind of Gormenghast, but the heart and empathy on display here are all the novel’s own. It’s completely charming.
Spot on regarding Cloudstreet